Unexpected victories

[Gilrandir]

Have you ever had battles which you almost gave up as hopeless, but you suddenly won?
The most memorable ones I had in the historic campaign of the French. It is the second battle called the Loire Valley.
If you remember, there is a castle of the English with an inner an outer yard (the latter does nor encompass the former completely, though). The condition of the victory is either to rout the enemy (which I never could do) or to bring into the castle 100 soldiers more than the enemy has.
After many fruitless attempts I dicovered the only (as I thought) successful tactics: I knocked a hole in the wall of the inner yard and attacked with the best troops having a sideshow force on the opposite side enter another breach.
Most English after successfully repelling the sideshow posse chased the routing survivors and stood there outside the walls. I managed to supress the few left in the inner yard thus bringing most of my troops within.
Yet, this tactics worked only two times out of a few dozens similar attacks and I couldn't figure out why.
Today I won this battle employing a different kind of tactics (well, I didn't know that I was until it was over).
To begin with, the only cannon that could breach the inner wall didn't work. It just didn't show the arrow sign whenever I might aim it (a glitch of some kind, I guess). So, I had to concentrate my forces opposite two breaches of the outer wall. As they started pouring into the outer yard the English withdrew to the inner citadel. I prepared to hopelessly storm it (hopelessly, since they had a lot of chivalric knights, foot knights, chivalric sergeants and what not). But suddenly the battle is over!!!! Evidently, my forces within the outer wall (the cannon crews including) outnumbered the enemy by a hundred soldiers.
Share you experiences, esteemed brothers in arms.

[Madden]

I tend to get these type of wins after I somehow pull out a great kill ratio durring a battle.. and the AI will auto-withdrawl all of the remaining units it has including re-enforcements.

Going into the battle there is no way I could have won.. esp since I allways play on Expert where the AI has so much moral boost, they could scare me out with numbers alone, but instead they leave the field. Might be to the General being killed, but they could still win the battle from number ratio possibilities.

[Brandy Blue]

I've probably mentioned before the time that my last surving unit on the field (vanilla horse archer) beat the AI's last unit (boyars) first in an archery duel and then, when the boyars charged, in hand to hand. A thoughly undeserved victory.